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Sunday, 7 February 2016

The Rose jacket I made up for the pattern release (free pattern FYI) was really just a sample to demonstrate the basic steps required to end up with a perfectly wearable jacket. This next one I am about to show you has some very minor adjustments or additions that are all perfectly doable should you wish to follow suit!

I have been pinning these gorgeous denim jackets for a while now and had in my head to use the Freemantle coat or BHL Victoria blazer pattern to make myself a super funky version. I went with the Rose jacket pattern instead because the seaming offers some fun topstitching options and it just seemed more suitable for what I want to wear it with all round really.

I bought some amazing Ink coloured denim fabric from Merchant and Mills for this garment. I have had the sample tormenting me for a while and realised this would be a great project for it. Initially I was imagining more bleached denim, but I like how smart this one looks. It's completely dark on the right side of the fabric with no white threads from the weave showing through. At the moment it's pretty crisp (no pre-washing as I didn't want to loose the finish), but I hope it will soften slightly with wear.

P.S. it was windy, so before I scraped my hair up it was everywhere!!!

As you can see there are buttons on this one! I thought it would be more practical to have a jacket I could do up on a windy day. The centre front of the garment is marked on the pattern, so all you need to do is decide on your spacing and mark where the buttons should go on your pattern/fabric. I used 20mm buttons in this case.

It's difficult to see, but I got rid of the front yoke seam. I overlapped the front yoke and main coat front by 3cm to get rid of the seam allowance and just treated it as one piece.

Rather than turn the hem edge under I created a facing for the front and back hem. I did this by drawing around the hem edge of my pattern piece onto my fabric with chalk and measuring the width I wanted my facing to be (plus seam allowance) from the chalk line. Cut both left and right out at the same time and boom you have facings! All construction continued in the same order as instructed.

Some little personal touches I added were to screen print my name on the back neck facing.

Hand stitch the buttonholes. Not brilliant, but nicer than my machined ones.

Hand stitch the lapels down through the main jacket body and underside of the lapel.

One other thing was to make the pockets approx. 2.5cm wider and longer than the pattern. I just fancied marginally bigger pockets!

I thought it would be fun to show you how else I will wear this. I think a narrow silhouette on the bottom half is best for me to balance things out, so either skinny jeans as above or this denim pencil skirt I made a couple of months ago (just needs buttons, oops). Not going to set the world alight, but it's easy and casual and comfortable!!!

Not a tricky project, but a complete pleasure to make! I really enjoyed the process and took my sweet time on this one, which I don't do very often. I think it paid off though as this will be a long standing member of my jacket family!

Monday, 1 February 2016

This new make is the True Bias Roscoe dress. I exchanged patterns with Kelli after the release of my Roberts pattern and have been sitting on it until I found a fabric that I thought was suitable. The pattern itself is just my style and I have a couple of trusty dresses in my wardrobe already which have a similar vibe to this, so I knew I would make this at some point!

The fabric I used is a cotton lawn from Fabworks mill shop and is super quality! I have recently discovered this place and I have been happy with everything I have ordered from there so far. The pattern calls for silky fabrics mainly, but I like this more casual fabric and with a slip underneath is fine with tights for the winter as well as cool for the summer!

I am sounding pretty cool about this dress so far, which is for no reason really because let me tell you I LOVE IT!!! I have taken indoor photos that are pretty ropey because I just needed them taken already so I can wear it now (I am by the way). Worn with a belt that I made from the very last scraps it is nice and shapely and feminine without being too dressed up. It makes such a welcome change from the dungarees I have been constantly wearing and I feel preeeetty.

I stuck to the pattern throughout making view C, but it turned out too long for me. I had added the ruffle already as I couldn't decide whether or not I would like it, so rather than unpick and shorten I just tucked up the amount I wanted to shorten and sewed along the original ruffle seam again. I then chopped off the excess, overlocked and topstitched the seam down. Doing it this way did mean that I ended up with four layers of fabric in the ruffle seam allowance, but this cotton is so fine it is not bulky at all. In total I removed 12.5cm (5") from the bottom of the main dress. In my case I was being a bit goldilocks. The long dress was too long and the short dress was too short, so I wanted something in between!

The only other deviation was to add elastic to the hem of the sleeves rather than the sleeve bands. I find with non stretch ends on gather cuffs they get stuck somewhere up my arm and then I have to tug them down, whereas stretchy ends are much easier to re-adjust. You can see the sleeve on my right arm (my most used arm) is caught up in every photo. If I made this again I might make full length sleeves to prevent this!

I think I will only ever wear this with a belt, as it has just the right amount of volume to not have too many gathers, but it does not look good left loose on me. Probably my fabric choice more than anything!

Fabric's a funny thing really. In the above photos, when the dress is belted, the cotton has just enough structure to support the shape of the sleeves and skirt. It is just perfect, but then below it does not look great at all!!!!

The verdict is that I really hope to use this pattern again and I shall wear this at least once a week until it starts to fall apart.

I don't know why I took photos with clogs on. I have actually just been wearing it out with some burgundy clumpy boots, which is much more me. Not truly representing myself here! Ta ra x